Explore "The Vultures" by Henry Seton Merriman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It is to be presumed that the majority of people are willing enough to seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to interfere in her neighbor's affairs, while it burdens society with a thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the masses.
Looking at the question from the strictly commonsense point of view, it would appear to the observer that those who do the most good or the least harm are the uncharitable. Better than the eager, verbose man is he who stands on the shore cynically watching a landsman in a boat without proffering advice as to how the vessel should be navigated, who only holds out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has happened, or, if no catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in that silent wonder which the care of Providence for the improvident must ever evoke.